MORE ABOUT SUPPORT CARE

Background 

Working within Bradford Social Services Department, Joy Howard initiated and developed the highly successful and radically new fostering scheme, Support Care.  The purpose of this fostering service is to offer young people and families in difficulties some practical help in the form of planned breaks with specialist foster carers. The initial proposal was made in 1992 - implementation, as a pilot within the Fostering Unit began in 1996.  Since then Support Care has gone from strength to strength.  In 1999 the strategic decision was made to move the service across to the Family Support sector of Bradford SSD, where it is now seen as a significant plank of preventative service provision.

Links to the Fostering Network

 From early on in the development of Support Care, Joy has been working closely with the Fostering Network, who were keen to support her in publicising the new service, seen by this organisation as ‘the preventative face of fostering’, and as something which should become part of mainstream provision.  A 'good practice' manual was published, and seminars to promote the ideas were held for local authorities in Birmingham. London and Perth. In 2001, a jointly organised national conference was held at the University of Bradford. This was followed up by a two year project, funded by LloydsTSB.  The purpose of the funding was to help disseminate the ideas of Support Care across the UK.  A series of regional day seminars, in which Birmingham Neighbourhood Care also took part was held, which significantly raised the profile of the service nationwide.  As consultant to this project, Joy also undertook individual sessional work with various LAs and voluntary sector organisations.

Links to government policy

Since 2001, Joy has also been working in liaison with central government.  The Cabinet Office Social Exclusion Unit and the Department of Health showed an early interest in the work, and Support Care was included as a recommendation in the Choice Protects review. At that time the DH also commissioned a piece of research designed to highlight progress, and examine the barriers to implementation of similar schemes across the board.  Following on from this, and coinciding with the end of the LloydsTSB project, the DfES has funded a further three year project through the Fostering Network.  Work is now underway with 14 pilot authorities in England.Separate funding was obtained for Wales; it is anticipated that a further five LAs, some in partnership with the voluntary sector, will participate. Joy is consultant to both projects.

What Support Care can do 

As Support Care Coordinator in Bradford, Joy was able to extend the original remit of the service to meet other different needs as they arose.  From the beginning we have encouraged the use of our Black and South Asian carers as befrienders of young people of dual heritage living in families where they do not have access to their full cultural heritage.  A specialist Adoption Support service was piloted, and is now being further developed by the adoption support team in Bradford.  Another extension of the service will be the provision of long term options, so that for families with chronic difficulties, their children and young people could experience a new kind of ‘in care’ placement – part of the time at home and part with a carer.

The range of Support Care provision to families has now been extended to include sessional work during the day and after school.  A further new development will involve joint working with Sure Start – the purpose of this is primarily to improve accessibility to the service for South Asian communities, both as service users and as carers.

Publications

The DH commissioned research was published in June 2004. (Greenfields M and Statham J ‘Support Foster Care – Developing a short-break service for children in need’ Institute of Education).  Barriers to implementation are discussed and several schemes studied in some depths. The research concludes by summarising the findings and identifying ways forward.

Joy has contributed chapters on Support Care to two Russell House publications: A Wheal ed ‘Working with Parents’ (2001), and the recently revised A. Wheal ed ‘Companion to Foster Care’ (2005).  The first full book length publication on Support Care, entitled ‘Support care: how family placement can keep children and families together’ was published in September 2005 by RHP.  Edited by Joy along with Helen Cosis Brown from Middlesex University and Ena Fry from the Fostering Network, the book includes chapters examining the wider context of government agendas such as family support, parenting and social inclusion; accounts of various Support Care schemes; the perspectives of both carers and a service user, and a summary of the research undertaken to date.

Taking it further

The ideas of Support Care have become increasingly widely known, and new schemes are being implemented across the UK.  It is hoped that funding will be found to set up a Support Care National Network in the next year.

Having taken retirement from Bradford in 2005, Joy is now working both for the Fostering Network and independently as a consultant to local authorities and to the voluntary and independent sectors.  For more information on this click here.